Day 50: Chapel

[full-score.livejournal.com]

The last thing Claude heard was the Head Doctor's voice faintly filtering into the corridors of the ship before he found himself tucked beneath the sheets of his bed. It took a moment to register he'd even changed locations, but then he he abruptly sat up, fought the wave of nausea that washed over him, and felt the blankets beneath his fingers. The room. He was back in his room now. Under different circumstances, he might have wondered if last night had been some horrid dream, but the sharp pain in his eyes gave him a rude awakening. Hissing through his teeth, Claude buried the heels of his palms against his lids, only to discover two cold compresses had been taped over them.

"Good morning, Thomas," he heard the nurse's cheerful voice from beside his bed. Her sudden presence nearly made him jump out of his skin, and he sharply turned toward the source of the greeting, heart beating rapidly in his chest. "I'm sorry you're not feeling well today, but hopefully you can still enjoy some of the activities we have planned."

'Not feeling well' was a bit of an understatement. His hand hurt, his stomach kept turning with every movement, and it felt like someone had dumped a bunch of sand into both eye sockets. Right now, Claude just wanted the nurse to leave him be, but it didn't look like that was an option. Taking his uninjured hand, she gently tugged him out of bed, despite his protests that, no, really, he just wanted to stay in and sleep, please.

"I think getting out of your room a little bit will do you good," she told him. "I'm sorry your eyes are probably hurting, though. If you're ever feeling uncomfortable, don't hesitate to ask one of us for some pills."

"What about eye drops?" Claude asked tightly.

"Oh, no, too much of that could damage your eyes," she cautioned, and the sheer irony of the situation hit Claude so hard that it would have been laughable if he didn't already feel like crying right then. The nurse was as oblivious to it as always, however. "I know you usually go into the chapel during this shift. Would you like to go there again?" Claude didn't answered immediately, but that didn't deter the nurse. "Yes, I think that sounds best..."

In truth, he probably should have requested the sun room -- it was closer, for one, which meant the nurse didn't have to lead him as far of a distance. For another, lying down on one of their sofas sounded like a good option. But by the time Claude came to that conclusion, he was too stubborn to say anything, and he made his way up to the second floor, his footing slow, but steady.

The nurse deposited him on one of the central pews, next to the aisle, before leaving him to himself. Thankfully, it was still early in the shift. As he paused to listen, the room was mostly silent, save for the footsteps and hushed voices of the occasional staff member or patient who trickled in. But it was probably only a matter of time before others came. For some reason, the thought of being stuck in a crowded room made him tense, not necessarily because he thought anyone would pay him any mind, but because he simply didn't want it right then.

Somehow, the full implications of what happened last night hadn't sunken in: experiments, healing himself, the issue of whether he could actually go home after this, not being able to see, the ship, father. Instead, he just felt saturated with all of it, paralyzed by the horror of what they'd done to him, and the uncertainty of what it all meant beyond this moment. Claude took a shuddering breath, uninjured hand balling into a fist in his lap.

[For Guy.]

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[boyking]

One look at his brother and even before Dean said anything, Sam thought, Oh yeah, something happened. More than just the revolving locations because that was an obviously mutual experience; Dean would've gotten right to the point if it'd been just that.

Sam raised an eyebrow and straightened up. "No, really, you think? Let me guess, one of the doors ended up throwing you back home."

He wasn't sure why Landel hadn't gone all out and made the entrance a wardrobe instead of a door altogether. He'd been too bewildered last night to think about it much, but the more he reflected on it now, the more he was just annoyed because while he could tolerate a lot of crap being pulled on him, he couldn't say he liked being dumped right in the middle of his brother's freaking grave for no discernible reason. And considering the entire location was a fabrication, it meant they knew. About everything, right down to the place where he buried Dean, a place only Bobby and Ruby knew of. He wasn't surprised by this news, but that didn't make the confirmation sit any easier.

Neither did the vivid reminder that Dean wasn't supposed to be here. Whatever he'd managed to suppress over the past couple of weeks, it'd broken the surface again and he couldn't help peering at his brother for a moment, like maybe if he stared hard enough, Dean would turn into a puff of smoke and disappear like a really, really bad practical joke.

He blinked and glanced away. A part of him was intensely glad that it hadn't been Dean with him last night. No way he could've explained the grave, the demon. It probably wasn't right, that he was okay with telling Peter all of that and not his own brother, but—and he had to wonder what might've happened if they hadn't walked into that motel room. Would they have been stuck there forever if they hadn't found the right door? Or had it been that they'd been transported back simply because time was up?

Christ, last night hadn't even been able to answer the question that'd been burning in the back of his mind ever since he'd arrived here: whether or not Dean could come back with him. Peter had stepped in just fine and he obviously didn't belong in that world, or at least wasn't categorized as such—only Sam had gotten his stuff back—but Sam knew, too, that that little corner of the universe hadn't been real. Though honestly...honestly if he could take Dean there, if that was the only place they could possibly go, would he?

If there hadn't been that one demon, God help him, he had a feeling the answer would've been yes in a heartbeat. The world might've been completely devoid of people there, but he'd be lying if he said that mattered when it came down to it. Maybe. He didn't know. Things always seemed like a good idea until he actually did it and then something else inevitably bulldozed everything to pieces.

Anyway, he shouldn't be toying with improbable scenarios and what-ifs. He was here, in a chapel that suddenly felt cold in its bareness, and Dean wanted to tell him something. He should probably just focus on that.

[kindalikedit]

Home. Yeah, right. Getting dumped in front of the Impala or the old house would've been been a walk in the park compared to last night.

"Uh, not exactly," Dean said slowly. He drummed his fingers on his thigh and then stopped. Might as well start from the beginning. "Ran into this guy and we ended up getting beamed around. Found some stuff we could use," he added, like that was any better.

He wasn't sure what to make of the TARDIS, the Daleks and hell, the Doctor himself. That was a beast in itself and he decided he might as well bring up the kennels first before he started going into the really crazy shit with Sam. There was no telling if tonight was going to be the same thing as last night, with the doors dumping them all over the place - either way, Dean wanted to get Sam caught up. The kennels were a lot simpler to deal with. That was a job, just a simple job. More like shooting fish in a barrel but it was either take them out like that or get bleeding hearts at a bad time and have to face them when they were bigger and meaner and suddenly less pitiful.

"Sam, there's some kennels around here. Real messed up crap going down, experiments and stuff," Dean gave a casual look around the chapel to make sure they weren't being overheard. "I think they're home brewing some of the freaks here. We should torch it if we find it again."

Accelerant shouldn't be too much of a problem. The cages hadn't seemed big enough for the monsters to put up too much of a fight and accidentally put the fire out and he figured if they monitored it, the entire room shouldn't go up in flames. Not that it didn't deserve it. Dean's kneejerk reaction was to torch the whole room itself, then move onto the entire Institute. But there were still civilians and hunters inside - and apparently a no-name time traveler - and they couldn't risk killing everyone inside just to be that thorough. Maybe there were a lot more demons in the mix, but the job was still hunting and saving people.

Y'know, maybe he wasn't entirely sold on the TARDIS being a time machine, but if it really could Delorean it up, it would've been nice to be able to go back and see how this place got started. Stop it before it got off the ground, exorcise any of the demons pulling the strings.

[boyking]

The kennels? Sam couldn't say that that was what he'd had in mind when Dean said he needed to talk to him about something, and he had a feeling that most likely, it wasn't. Dean had a habit of focusing on the small stuff when he was avoiding something bigger. Because really, the kennels had been pretty damn unsettling, but it was hardly the root of their problems, and they both knew it.

"I know, I saw it. We got dumped there, too." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I don't know. We'll just—we'll deal with it if it come up again."

Honestly, he had no idea what torching that place would accomplish except to set off the sprinklers again. The institute obviously wasn't running out of mutant freaks to sic on the patients and given the illusory nature of the area that'd been demonstrated over and over again—it was hard to think that anything they did affected their surroundings. The only things that ever seemed to be affected in any real way were the patients, and even then...

But he wasn't about to shoot Dean down on the suggestion. He got that his brother wanted to be able to do something and if setting stuff on fire made him feel productive, well, Sam had to admit he sort of understood the theory behind that. Though yeah, it was seriously the last thing he wanted to think about it when he had all this other crap on his plate. As far as he was concerned, it didn't make the priority list.

There was a beat while he debated asking Dean what was really on his mind, but he decided they had time yet for Dean to get around to it on his own. Besides, Sam had a stack of information he needed to give his brother, too, stuff that he just wanted to get out of the way as soon as possible.

"So—Peter knows," he said, casual enough, but with an uneasiness that lurked beneath the surface. "Vaguely, at least. About what we do. He got sucked into my world with me, it got kinda hard to lie to the guy after he got jumped by a demon."

The only demon Sam had seen in days, but that had to have been something crafted by the institute. Ruby was right; there were no demons here. The mere fact that Sam hadn't met one was proof enough of that. He knew better than to believe they were leaving him alone or something. No, if there were demons hanging about, they would've shown themselves a long time ago, especially with Dean around.

[kindalikedit]

Dean sighed. Wasn't really his preference to have Peter get dragged even deeper into this but getting jumped by an honest to God demon wasn't something you could just tell him to ignore. Or pass off as a gas leak. He wanted to say this would make things easier that Peter knew what they did - well, sorta - but he suspected it wasn't going to be so simple since they were all close quarters in the Institute.

"Okay, so I'm guessing we'll have to be pretty upfront with him, at least on some stuff." Dean paused. Wait. Sam had said something that he'd almost missed, except it'd struck him as weird. Dean backed up, raising an eyebrow at his brother. "What d'you mean, 'your world'?"

Last he checked, Sam was still Kansas grown; maybe there was stuff he found kinda just weird about the kid - the visions and the hunches, for starters - but he was just as human as Peter or anyone else here. He couldn't mean home. They used to have a house in Lawrence but that wasn't home, not really. It was just a house with a lot of bad memories and Missouri was keeping an eye on that place in case any more poltergeists decided to drop in and make it a stomping ground. Saying my world was a real funny way of putting it when Dean had talked to Peter and he'd come across as just a normal, if wish-washy, kid. Not exactly real Close Encounters.

Something felt off again. Dean couldn't quite tell what it was. It bugged him. Sam had a habit of following in Dad's footsteps and keeping some stuff close on a need-to-know basis and okay, fine, he got that the kid could go from bleeding hearts to all private on him. Sometimes it just wasn't the right time to explain and there was just the job to do and it had to get done. If it was just that, Dean would roll with it. He'd told himself that was what it was. Call it a hunch but he kept getting the feeling Sam was keeping something from him and it wasn't just job-related.

Maybe he was being a big old hypocrite but hey, he'd come clean with Sam about Cold Oak, even if the kid had already figured it out on his own. If the kid had other problems, Dean wanted to be in on it. He was a big boy. He could take whatever Sam threw at him. Had he found out how long they'd been here? There was always the possibility Sam had found out and maybe the deal was shorter than the year he'd assumed he'd get - maybe he didn't want to tell him. If that was the case, that was pure crap. Dean needed to know. Be easier to work if he could expect to wake up the next morning and not find a hellhound slobbering all over him, for starters.

[boyking]

Sam frowned, but after a split second of hesitation, decided he might as well tell Dean about Peter. His roommate wasn't exactly tight-lipped about it; if Dean spoke with Peter enough, he had a feeling Peter would just outright tell Dean about his abilities. It'd...probably be better if Dean wasn't surprised by that bit of information.

Besides, this was connected to something bigger, something that he was well aware Dean needed to know.

"Peter's kind of like me," he said. "But he's not, the way he explained his abilities and what he knows about it, it's completely different from the way it works for us. It's weird, you know? I mean, you remember the kid who said his family exorcised ghosts—I keep running into things like that. People who can do things, but the details don't match up with ours." He paused, eyebrows furrowed in thought. "Look, I know it sounds insane, but I don't think we can pretend everyone here comes from the same...conceptual universe anymore. All the evidence points to the contrary. Plus it's not like this sort of stuff hasn't been showing up for centuries in lore."

Dean must've taken the idea into consideration, hadn't he? Or maybe he simply hadn't spoken to the same people Sam had. It was true that if Sam hadn't had a reason to seek out those who were like him, people with abilities, and if he hadn't already known far ahead of time that he and Dean were from way different points in time, it might not have been something he would've looked at too deeply. Even now, he knew it sounded crazy, laying it all out like that.

Still, it made sense, too. It was the only thing that made sense, the only thing that explained all the discrepancies that kept throwing him off. The main problem was trying to piece together how it worked. It was all very well and good to figure out what was going on, but they weren't going to get real far unless they figured out how, as well.

Which was an issue, since his knowledge on parallel universes was minimal at best. He remembered the several instances he'd come across it while researching something else—and he'd read a bunch of stuff after he'd come across the mystery spot case down in Florida—but all of that made up the bare bones at best.

[kindalikedit]

It fit the pattern and yet it didn't. This wasn't just a carbon copy of Cold Oak. Dean slung his arm around the back of the pew.

He could get people having different powers. But different dimensions or worlds? C'mon. It had the makings of a crappy movie written all over it. Wasn't like there was real proof (sometimes lore was just a big game of Telephone), except...he couldn't be one hundred percent certain on even that 'cause of last night's party with the Doctor and the TARDIS being impossibly big on the inside. How else could he explain it? There was the usual excuse of tripping balls or blaming it on a Trickster. That didn't even add up either. The Doctor had actually acted intimidated by the knife and he was what was the word - too nice. Weird, but not enough of a douche to fit that Trickster bill and hadn't been too jazzed to be lumped in with them either. In fact, he'd taken care of his hand and kinda-sorta fought off the Daleks, so...

This was a lot easier when Dean could've said for sure that there was no such thing as parallel worlds or multiple dimensions or what the hell ever.

He missed that.

"Yeah..." Dean trailed off. He didn't know what to say at first; this was usually the part where he'd shrug and blow it off 'cause there wasn't definite proof that there were alternate dimensions. The whole thing with Hell? Didn't quite count. It was easier to buy when you had demons all corroborating about Hell when they were spitting mad in a trap and saying the same thing. "Actually, I figure I gotta talk to you about that."

Dean wasn't even sure where to start. Somehow he was still so bowled over by last night that accepting Peter had not only seen his very first demon but also had creepy powers was a lot easier to take than getting told he'd got lumped into his very own version of Sliders. Dean found himself glancing around for the Doctor, as if he could corroborate that yeah, he'd really been attacked by a group of rabid R2D2s and that he'd really been inside the TARDIS. No sign of the guy - maybe he'd ended up in another room.

"So all the stuff you got on dimensions and stuff," Dean started slowly. He wasn't really into looking into this just 'cause personally. He was all for the bits where you found out what the monster was and how to kill it. This was more Sam's turf and they both knew it. "Is it possible to have it in one spot? Like you could step into a room and it's way bigger on the inside?"

Okay. Crazy but not I met Marty McFly and the dude had a bitchin' jacket, and oh, there were robots with phasers level of crazy. Not yet, anyway.

[boyking]

Of course Dean wouldn't beli—

Wait. What?

Sam had been expecting to be met with pure skepticism, not outright acceptance. His theory was borderline absurd, he knew that. They both did. It was Sam's job to put this stuff on the table and it was Dean's to boggle at it. Only on occasion did they switch. But apparently, today Dean had decided to one-up Sam on the crazy scale.

Thrown by this sudden bit of information (dimension housed within a dimension, really? Was that what Dean was suggesting?), Sam blinked. He lifted a hand halfway, paused. "Uh," he said. Yes, brimming with intelligence, clearly.

His hand went up the rest of the way to push his hair out of his eyes. "I don't know. Quantum mechanics is a little out of my league, Dean. I mean—some religious cosmologies indicate that infinite universes are out there, but I've never heard of it applying to a single confined area."

He'd been prepared to defend his own hypothesis, but Dean's theory was a whole other game altogether. Sure, it was possible; if time travel and dimensional travel were possible, then he couldn't see why this couldn't be true, either. They'd been stepping through doors into different locations all night, so what Dean was describing could easily just be another case of the same kind of thing: a door leading to an apparently smaller room transporting its occupants somewhere else altogether, except this door went back and forth between the same two places only. A form of teleporting, then? He honestly couldn't say. The two could be related, though hell if he knew how.

Besides, if Dean didn't think it was an illusion—if his brother suspected it was real enough to bring up the concept in the first place, then he was probably right. Sam couldn't think of anything else to explain what Dean had apparently encountered.

Which did bring up the question: What had Dean encountered? Because Sam figured both of them would've had weirder than average nights, but it seemed Dean had blown past weird, judging from his preliminary accounts.

He peered at his brother, the question obvious in his eyes, though instead of voicing it, he said instead: "Maybe you fell down a rabbit hole."

[kindalikedit]

Dean snorted. Yeah, one hell of a big, unconventional rabbit hole there.

He reached up, rubbing his cheek thoughtfully and glancing down at his hand. No sign of the burn from the sonic screwdriver. No bandage either. But he knew what he saw and considering that Sam had also experienced the same teleportation crap as he had, he couldn't just pass this off as him hallucinating or getting attacked by one of the trickier monsters out there. Well, he could try anyway, but Sam's experience with the doors matched his - except Sam had ended up back in the normal world and he...wasn't sure what he'd ended up smack in the middle of. Man, and there was still Peter to deal with too. And this stuff about "home" 'cause Sam had kinda glossed over his question there too.

"Look, I know what you're gonna think. And for the record, I still think it was crazy, but..." Dean paused and then chugged on ahead. "Basically I spent the tail end of the night getting chased by robots. And the Doctor showed me his time machine."

Sounded like an off the wall pickup line. If only.

Dean's mouth quirked as he shrugged. It was kinda one of those you had to be there moments. "Wasn't exactly all classy like a Delorean either. It was some kind of blue telephone box, but it was way bigger on the inside. That's why I was asking about it."

Probably better to skip the wardrobe and the pool. Or the medical bay the Doctor had stashed away. It did bring up the question of if the TARDIS was so big that he could actually forget what rooms where where - made a guy wonder if the Doctor had actually misplaced rooms somehow, which was mind-boggling in itself. That was kinda cool...but also scary at the same time, especially when he'd been raised with the attitude that if you packed heat, you better be able to find it when you needed it. Come to think of it, he hadn't recalled seeing the Doctor actually using any conventional weapons. No guns or knives stashed around the TARDIS, at least not anywhere he could see. While he wasn't sure what exactly that sonic screwdriver could do, it seemed kinda...small when you compared to the Daleks' death rays there.

Dean made sure to make eye contact with his brother, almost half challenging him to point out the obvious. Yeah, yeah, it sounded crazy, it was crazy. He got that. But it'd still happened and Sam deserved to know about it.

[boyking]

Sam had only been kidding with that last remark, but when Dean went on a little further, he couldn't help but think that it really did sound like what would've happened if someone decided to sci-fi up Alice in Wonderland.

He hesitated, stared, eyebrows raised. He nodded. "Yeah, that is crazy."

He paused again. There wasn't much you could say to robots and time machines that didn't obey the laws of physics. And a doctor, apparently. What? If he didn't know better, he would've asked if Dean had been tripping on something.

Actually, a part of him felt like asking that, anyway. Seriously, this wasn't even a case of sorting stuff out. He was just baffled, plain and simple, and it was rare he ran up against something that made as little sense as this. Even the Trickster, the first time around—even that had given them a couple of leads to go off of, and that case had included a freaking alien abduction.

Letting out a slow breath, he said, "Maybe wherever your friend came from, that's how things are. You know, like we have demons and he has, uh. Robots."

It was an easy explanation, a cop-out almost—that's just the way it is—but Sam knew, too, that sometimes, it was better to accept things at face value and go from there instead of driving yourself crazy trying to figure out how the hell something was even possible. Because the truth was, it wasn't as though he had a good explanation for why all those things that should've belonged in a mythology book on a library shelf, why they were real. They just were.

Telling himself this was simpler than getting his mind to accept it, though. He rubbed the corner of his eye. He had a crapload of questions for Dean, but now wasn't the time to start chipping away at that. He needed to do it in a place where he wasn't surrounded by people, where he could actually think without the low chatter of the patients buzzing in his ear.

"I think I should come find you tonight and we can talk this over. I wanna start putting our information together, make sure we're both on the same page."

[kindalikedit]

Dean wouldn't call the Doctor a friend, but he figured when you spent the night running through a real life Indiana Jones knockoff and dodging Dalek death rays that it had to count for something. Like the "holy shit, we survived" kinda bond or whatever. Christ. Normal guys, they went out for a drink, watched a game. Maybe called it a night or kicked back another beer. Only here could friggen robots count as water cooler talk.

"Works for me," Dean said, relieved they were heading back to familiar territory. "I'll bring what I got. Maybe we should trap your room like mine, just in case. Never know."

And that was just on what needed killing, where they'd spotted each suspect and where to go from there. It would've been a challenge even with the Impala and a safe spot like their motel room. Here it was going down differently and Dean figured that they'd have to draw some lines and figure out what they could realistically hunt down and gank, and what they might have to leave off until they were better equipped. Nevermind trying to figure out where the end of this breadcrumb trail led and just what the head honcho really was. He refused, flat out refused to think of this as 'cause of a person. It was a thing. There was a difference. People were dicks, people could do their own brand of evil shit, but this was something else entirely.

Especially if there really was people getting jacked across continents or this "other world" business of Sam's. If Dean was going out on a limb and believing the Doctor being a time traveler, then that was even more scary. What could jack someone armed with a time machine like it was nothing?

He suspected they were in way, way over their heads. Dean also knew that it didn't matter. There was a job here and they had to at least try. Crossroads deal or not, it didn't matter. This was just too big to consider strolling away from.

Dean watched Sam. If this wasn't, y'know, possibly deadly, he would've said this was right up the kid's alley. Sam had always liked researching and just knowing stuff, even if he'd also made sure he could shoot worth a damn between reading and soccer as a kid.

"What about that Ruby chick? She got anything new?"

[boyking]

Sam shook his head. "Salt line's good enough. We need at least one space looking kinda normal."

Which was half true; what if there was someone who didn't know about any of this stuff that wanted to talk to them or they needed some kinda information out of? You could hand wave that stuff, make excuses, sure, but it was a little easier to get someone to trust you enough to spill what they knew when you weren't hedging around why there was a freaking protective circle graffiti'd on your ceiling.

And then there was Ruby. Main reason why he was hoping to avoid the whole thing, obviously, but that. That, he was not telling Dean about.

"Your room's all properly decorated, right?" he went on, an air of I'm just being practical underlying the words. "We can just use yours."

Besides, he wanted to swing by Ruby's along the way, and it'd be simpler to do that if he wasn't waiting for Dean to come by. He would've liked to have her there, even, along with Dean, but the inevitable uneasiness he would feel having the two of them around each other wasn't close to being worth it. But he remembered bouncing ideas off of Ruby, too, over breakfast or in the car or late at night in bed when he couldn't sleep and Ruby didn't need to sleep, and while it hadn't been the same, it was...

Anyway.

Speaking of Ruby.

"I haven't spoken to her in a couple of days or so. I could catch up with her later today, though, see what she knows."